9. confidence?
none. hahaha!
my general lack of self-confidence influences various aspects of my life, including (but not limited to):
•making eye contact with people
•crossing the street
•socializing in large groups
•being confrontational with others
•initiating conversations
•my level of self-consciousness in public
the list goes on and on. how do i even function as a person??
if you tie together threads from a few of my past blog posts, you might glean a few clues as to what the root of my self-doubt might be. social anxiety? pervasive stress? emotional suppression?
if i had to identify a point in time where my self-esteem first started deteriorating, i'd have to say it happened during 6th grade.
⚠️ heads up, this post is going to be about stuff i've never really discussed with anyone. it's about to get real depressing.
i was naturally spunky as a kid. quick with jokes and incontrovertibly weird, skating by on my smarts and charm. i transferred to a new school in 5th grade, but even then i kept all my bizarreness intact.
6th grade was where it all changed. somehow all the weird stuff that once made me funny became what people used to make fun of me. it felt like everyone was against me even though that wasn't the case. i began to question everything i said, everything i believed, everything that made me who i was. i became really moody and reclusive, trying my best to fit in and avoid being humiliated. i toned down the weirdness and kept my mouth shut. basically i was being bullied into being "normal".
i'm still kinda hesitant to call it "bullying", though. i know there are tons of people who went through experiences much worse than mine. i was never physically abused or publicly shamed or anything like that. it might be that i was just really thin-skinned as a kid. i don't know.
many times i considered telling a teacher or my parents about what i was going through. for some reason i never did. i'm sure they would have been able to help at least a little bit. i don't know... i just felt so ashamed and incapable that it prevented me from seeking help.
near the end of the year things got a bit better. but that still stands out as a really dark period of my life. it's where i seriously questioned my self-worth and whether or not my existence made a difference. those thoughts still really fricking terrify me. even though they don't bother me as much nowadays, i always have lingering fears that i've internalized them somehow without realizing it.
i'm really grateful that my experience wasn't worse. without a doubt. some people's experiences are much darker and more traumatic. some people don't make it out. so just to be alive and feel alive today is such a blessing.
oof. this is heavy stuff. you'd think the prompt was "write about a doomy gloomy time in your life" or something like that.
back to the idea of confidence. as i mentioned in "leading", uncertainty and misjudgments about my life have been pretty discouraging. i've kind of given up hope of recapturing the unabashed idiosyncrasy of my youth. i'm still pretty weird (obviously), but not nearly to my former extent.
but life goes on. hence the title of this post - "encouraging". i've made it a personal goal of mine to instill confidence and self-esteem in my friends and peers. i don't want anyone to go through what i went through. in doing so, i hope to gain more confidence in myself and what i can do for the world. little by little. piece by piece. one small act of kindness after another.
as pop says in the first season of luke cage, "the past is the past. and the only direction in life that matters is forward. never backwards."
always forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment